Education

Nowadays education has spread beyond the classroom and is now available to the masses. Due to the use of the internet we have an almost unlimited source of human knowledge with which to expand our understanding of anything and everything.

Online Revision -

Online revision websites such as BBC Bitesize, SAM Learning and Mymaths allow students to improve their understanding of their subjects and therefore boost their skills thus increasing the chances of them doing well in various exams. With all of this being available from the comfort of the student’s homes pupils are able achieve their full potential and beyond without needing to ‘splash out’ on expensive books and tutoring. The aim of these websites is to provide people with easily accessible source of information to help educate them. BBC Bitesize is a free online study support created by the BBC and provides education resources for Key Stage One, Scottish First Level, Key Stage Two, Scottish Second Level, Key Stage Three, GCSE, TGAU, Standard Grade and Higher students. These resources include passages of useful information, exercises, online tests, education videos and interactive activities. It can be accessed almost anywhere due to its multi-platform support and mobile phone access and is therefore extremely useful for last minute revision on exam facts.

Personal Use Of Online Revision:

Personally I use online revision websites a lot. When studying for my GCSE exams it was my third most frequently used technique, only being succeeded by rereading sections of my textbooks and written notes.

Online Past Exam Papers -

Most exam boards allow members of the public to download past and sample exam papers. With these students can get a grasp of what to expect in their upcoming exams and allow them to make preparations for unexpected questions and topics which need to be studied further. They are extremely helpful and are used by teachers and students alike. Exam boards which offer this include AQA (http://web.aqa.org.uk/), Edexcel (http://www.edexcel.com/Pages/Home.aspx) and more.

Wikipedia -

Wikipedia is free online encyclopaedia which contains information about pretty much everything there is to know. It is so immensely large due to its user generated content. The website allows users to upload their own articles on the site, which if good enough may be published as an official Wikipedia page. It currently has about 100,000 active contributors and in 2011 received an estimated 2.7 monthly page views from the USA alone. However it is commonly used and abused by students to take shortcuts with their homework assignments. It is now common for teachers to receive work from their classes containing large sections copied directly from Wikipedia. Unfortunately not all information on Wikipedia is accurate and the users whom publish the articles occasionally may leave their work laced with spelling errors and incorrect facts. To add to this, anyone can edit the articles and therefore destroy the accuracy of them. Therefore despite Wikipedia being a massively useful resource, it has gained a degree of infamy in places of education.

E-Commerce

E-Commerce is the act of purchasing and selling items or services via the internet.

Online Banking -

Online banking allows bank account owners to transfer various amounts of money and manage their banks remotely via the use of the internet. Nowadays many of the major banking chains offer this service to their customers, this includes: Natwest (http://www.natwest.com/personal.ashx), Lloydes TSB (http://www.lloydstsb.com/), Halifax (http://www.halifax.co.uk/home/home.asp),  Bank of Scotland (http://www.bankofscotland.co.uk/), HSBC (http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/) and more. This advancement in technology is largely what has allowed the internet to become the thriving source of commerce it is today. It has done so by enabling the public access to the seemingly endless supply of goods and services the internet has to offer.

Personal use of Online Banking:

Personally the only online banking service I use at the moment is PayPal. I use because it allows simple and easy money transfers to the majority of the larger online shopping sites such as Steam (a popular gaming service by a company named Valve) and Ebay (an online auctioning website).

Advertising -

Advertising is one of the largest sources of income online. The method used online is relatively simple, people wishing to promote their sites, business or products will pay site owners to host their adverts. In exchange for money they shall receive traffic (people clicking on the advert and therefore visiting the site of whoever created it). Money is often paid per or for hosting the content for a certain amount of time.

The largest source of online advertising is from Google’s AdWorlds and AdSence. AdWorlds allows advertisers to pay for their adverts to be hosted on any site using AdSence; and AdSence allows websites to host adverts in exchange for income. In the first quarter of 2011 Google earned over 2.43 billion dollars via AdSense alone. This platform for advertising has been a huge success and has become a prime source of income for some people. For example, one extremely successful Youtube user whom goes by the name ‘RayWilliamJohnson’ is estimated to be making between £191.4 thousand and £1.8 million per year (statistics found via Socialblade, link:  http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/RayWilliamJohnson). However, despite these achievements various problems can arise. Two of these are Click Fraud and Inappropriate Content. Click Fraud occurs when the pay per click method of advertising is in use. Either people can click their own adverts therefore earning ‘free money’ or use software to automatically do so for them. This is highly illegal and companies such as Google often take measures to prevent this, but there are often loopholes in systems which tend to be exploited.

Personal use of Online Advertising:

The only real use of online advertising I have ever had was with Google’s AdSense via the popular video sharing site Youtube. I was able to make about £65 via the service one month, however I have since stopped using it.

Online Shopping -

Online Shopping has revolutionised the purchasing of products. Popular sites for online shopping include Ebay (an online auctioning service), Amazon (a website which allows users to buy items from an enormous range of products and have them delivered via post), ITunes (a service which allows users to purchase music and video downloads, which may then be stored in various ‘Apple’ products such as the Ipod, Iphone and Apple MacBook), Steam (an online service which allows users to pay for and then download games onto their computers) and many more. This form of shopping has become so popular due a variety of different reasons. One reason being that the internet provides a far greater range of products than any local stores could offer; also it is far easier to find exactly what you are looking for, due to search engines such as Google and Bing. Other reasons for its success include users not having to leave the comfort of their homes to purchase items (this is extremely useful for people whom are too busy, may have issues such as depression which prevent them leaving their houses or are too shy to go shopping at real shops), that there are often large waiting lines which people must endure to buy products and that shopping online provides a more personal experience (allowing users to change website themes, suggesting items they may want to buy and sometimes even allowing them to personalise the product they wish to buy, all done via the use of cookies). In theory, due to online shopping a person could survive without ever having to leave their home.

Online Auctions -

Online auction sites are forms of online shopping. However the between online auctioning and normal online shopping is that instead of simply buying an item for a set price (E.g. a CD costing £7.99) users must outbid others in order to ‘win’ the item which they seek and have to maintain the place of highest bidder until the auction for the product is finished. One of the more popular online auctioning websites is Ebay (http://www.ebay.co.uk/). Ebay was founded in 1995 and is now a multi-billion dollar business. The main reason for its success is that it allows anyone to sell anything (that isn’t illegal) to anybody.